Tobacco sting took a toll

July 14, 2006

Nothing motivates merchants to check the IDs of young customers quite like the fear of getting caught selling cigarettes to minors -- unless, of course, it's the desire to obey the law. Surely it is a rare retailer who would choose to profit from illicit sales instead of doing the right thing. So it was a little surprising that four of 24 stores picked for a recent sting did sell tobacco to kids under age 18. Usually there are far fewer offenders than that. The stings are conducted by the St. Joseph County Tobacco Quit Project, police and a team of teen-aged volunteers. The teens visit the stores and ask for cigarettes. The police officers witness the transactions and issue tickets to offending merchants. We hope the high number of violators this time around was a fluke. It had been six months since the last sting, so merchants might not have been as alert as usual to tobacco-buying minors. Another suggestion -- that, because school was only recently out, there were more newly-hired, inexperienced clerks -- makes sense, too. In any case, we do believe that the sting operations fulfill an important deterrent function. It could be that they need to be conducted more frequently.